There's an awful lot you can do, but shouldn't.
If the voice of the people is the concern, there should just be a referendum. I for one would vote to save the penny.
As for my claim (that people in a dictactorship wouldn’t be able to use the internet), here’s an example of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_the_Ara...
* The US constitution has an executive branch consisting of a single person, the President. (The other two branches are judicial and legislative)
* That person is given broad authority that includes the treasury, commanding the military, pardoning power, appointing a cabinet, etc.
* Delegating this is well within the power of the executive
That said we're allowed to complain about these things and a big enough protest could have the desired effect. I love pennies myself, but I'm not interested enough to leave my Go compiler long enough to do so.
Congress, not the executive. And the supreme court has ruled that power to be exclusive
source: https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artI-S8-C5-1/...
Although when Australia introduced it, a number of retailers got fined for rounding everything up, or for rounding every individual item.
And only for cash. For card, it was still the exact amount.
Not everyone though is that fortunate.
~50% in India: https://www.pymnts.com/mobile-wallets/2023/cash-not-king-in-...
~60% in Brazil: https://www.pymnts.com/mobile/2025/payment-glitches-stall-br...
Similar trends in Africa, though exact numbers were harder to find: https://www.finextra.com/blogposting/27913/africa-the-unlike...
So, modern pennies are just copped plated zinc. But up to 1982 (barring some small interruptions like the 1943 steel penny) they were 95% copper. There was roughly 2.95 grams of copper in each penny.
Current copper prices seems to be approximately $12.31/kg or $0.0123/gram. That is about $0.036 per pre-1982 penny. Round down to 3 cents/penny to account for recycling costs. If you took all pre-1982 copper pennies you could out of circulation yourself you could make a 3x return!
(I have no idea how many pre-1982 pennies are still in circulation and it seems like this isn't public knowledge. Something tells me this endeavour to recycle them, as an individual, would never be fruitful. Also... my memory is that there is some question of legality in destroying currency en masse...)
To educate people about the strength and resiliency of markets.
Sure you can, you just have to find an unscrupulous copper merchant to sell it to. Not a difficult task - they've been around for thousands of years.
I'd expected older sites elsewhere, but apparently parts of that complex predate copper workings elsewhere (and the Bronze Age (copper and tin metalworking)).
https://www.usmint.gov/news/press-releases/20061214-united-s...
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2007/04/16/E7-7088...
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-B/chapter-I/p...
Pursuant to this authority, the Secretary of the Treasury has determined that, to protect the coinage of the United States, it is necessary to generally prohibit the exportation, melting, or treatment of 5-cent and one-cent coins minted and issued by the United States. The Secretary has made this determination because the values of the metal contents of 5-cent and one-cent coins are in excess of their respective face values, raising the likelihood that these coins will be the subject of recycling and speculation.
A melt of 1,000,000 pennies would be about 3000kg, so 510 kWhr of energy, and using an electric furnace that is about 50% efficient at putting its heat into the melt, that is about 1000 kWhr at the wall outlet. I've been in foundries with crucibles that could do probably about 200kg copper pours, with a furnace power of about 100kW, you'd do a full crucible melt every few hours, and you'd run this continuously until you're out.
If you live somewhere with electricity, say, $0.15/kWhr energy, that is a melt cost of $150.
1,000,000 pennies at 3 cents per worth of copper would be about $30,000 in copper reclaimed over the course of a few days.
So, it would be absolutely profitable in large quantities, assuming you ... already work in a foundry.
And the laws only apply within the country (although bulk exportation is generally illegal). In Australia in the 1920s and 1930s there was a bit of illegal exporting of silver coins to South-East Asia due to the high silver content.
After that ball was dropped, eventually the penny was debased by 1982, ushering in the modern era where all copper wiring and plumbing is increasingly subject to destructive theft like never before.
https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/22/bt_copper_cable_theft...
gnabgib•7mo ago
svieira•7mo ago
For those who don't know, the US Dollar was based on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_real which was often broken into eight pieces to make change (hence, "pieces of eight" and "two bits"). Might as well bring it back while inflation lets us be nostalgic.